UpdraftPlus Review 2026: Free vs Premium, Real Restores
UpdraftPlus is a useful free starting point for scheduled WordPress backups and cloud storage. Premium adds more automation and backup options. Connect offsite storage, confirm the schedule is saved and test a restore before relying on it.
What Is UpdraftPlus?
UpdraftPlus is a WordPress plugin that backs up your site’s database and files, sends copies to cloud storage, and restores them from your dashboard. With 4,000,000+ active installs, it is one of the most used plugins on WordPress.org.
It grew out of Updraft, a plugin Paul Kehrer released in 2010, and has been on WordPress.org as UpdraftPlus since May 2012. TeamUpdraft, which also makes WP-Optimize and All-In-One Security, says its plugins run on more than 5 million sites.
UpdraftPlus splits every backup into separate parts: the database, plugins, themes, uploads and “others” (anything else in wp-content). That split is why you can restore one part without touching the rest.
Backup and restore findings
The free plugin backed up our small site and successfully restored a deleted post, changed title and missing photo. Database-only restore recovered the post and title without changing uploads; restoring uploads recovered the photo separately. That selectivity is useful when you only need to reverse one kind of change.
The wizard left our chosen weekly schedule unscheduled until we saved the Settings tab. Check that “Next scheduled backups” actually shows a date. Optional extra plugins were also preselected during setup; skip them if you only want backups.
Free backups omit WordPress core and wp-config.php. Core can be downloaded again, but keep an independent copy of the configuration file. Connect remote storage too: a backup left on the same server is vulnerable to the same failure.
Our restores displayed a database-collation warning even on the server that created the backup. Leaving the default replacement choice worked in this session. Replaced folders remained with “-old” names until cleanup.
Keep the restore page open until it finishes, then inspect the site. An earlier interrupted session left files incomplete and also had a permissions problem. Separately, one of four restores in our backup roundup reported success but left a database error. These small local tests support checking recovery, not assuming every restore will be reliable.
UpdraftPlus Free vs Premium
The free version covers the basics well. Premium adds automation and more places to store backups. Here is the split as of October 2026, from the plugin’s own screens and TeamUpdraft’s comparison page.
Free UpdraftPlus can restore individual components, schedule files from every two hours to monthly and databases from hourly to monthly. It supports one destination per backup, including Dropbox, Google Drive, S3 and compatible services, Rackspace, FTP, OpenStack, DreamObjects and email. Support is through WordPress.org, and retention is a simple number of backups.
Premium adds fixed backup times, multiple destinations, pre-update and incremental backups, older-backup thinning, database encryption and anonymization, multisite and WP-CLI. It can include WordPress core, wp-config.php, external folders, non-WordPress tables and external databases. Additional destinations include OneDrive, Azure, SFTP/SCP, FTPS, Google Cloud, Backblaze, WebDAV and pCloud, with email support.
The vendor describes free migration by restoring a backup on the new site; Premium adds direct site-to-site transfer.
Free and Premium storage choices on the Settings tab, UpdraftPlus on our test site.
A few details from the test install:
- You connect storage yourself. For Google Drive, save your settings, then click Sign in with Google. A custom folder name is Premium.
- Backups stay on your server until you do. UpdraftPlus itself warns that losing the server would mean losing the site and its backups together.
- Upgrade prompts stay on the plugin’s page. A rotating banner promoted All-In-One Security, Premium support and migration, and the Migrate / Clone tab sells UpdraftClone and Premium. We saw no UpdraftPlus notices on the main WordPress dashboard.
Who needs Premium? If you update plugins often, the backup before updates is the most useful extra. Stores gain from two storage locations and incremental backups. Agencies get the most value, since $95 covers 10 sites.
UpdraftPlus Pricing (October 2026)
Every Premium plan has the same features. Higher tiers add sites, storage and staging.
Personal costs $70 annually for two sites, Business $95 for ten, Agency $145 for 35 and Enterprise $195 for unlimited sites. Each includes 1 GB UpdraftVault storage. Gold costs $399 annually for unlimited sites, 50 GB storage and UpdraftCentral management.
Intro vs renewal price. In October 2026 the pricing page showed one price per plan, with no separate first-year deal, and said subscriptions renew automatically each year. We found no different renewal price on the pricing, refund or terms pages. TeamUpdraft’s refund terms do mention a case where you bought at a discounted introductory price, so watch for sales: if you buy at a discount, expect the next year to bill at the full price above.
If you cancel. The pricing page says Premium keeps working after your year ends. You just stop getting updates, new features and support. Updates matter for a backup plugin: in June 2026 TeamUpdraft fixed a serious security flaw that it said could allow a full site takeover on a small share of sites. The fix came in free version 1.26.5 and Premium 2.26.5, and the company also offered a separate patch plugin for people with lapsed licenses.
Refunds. The refund terms page offers a 14-day money-back guarantee. Some older pages on the same site still say 10 days, so ask within 10 days to be safe.
Paid add-ons:
- UpdraftVault is TeamUpdraft’s own cloud storage, built on Amazon S3. Beyond the 1 GB in Premium, 5 GB costs $35 a year (or $10 every 3 months), 15 GB $70, 50 GB $175 and 250 GB $450. In October 2026 the 5 GB plan had a $1 first month, then $35 a year.
- UpdraftClone makes a temporary copy of your site on TeamUpdraft’s servers for testing. It uses tokens: 5 for $15, 20 for $49 or 50 for $99, or monthly token plans. A site up to 25 GB costs one token to start and one per week.
UpdraftPlus Alternatives
UpdraftPlus is not the only good choice. Our full backup plugin comparison ran the same break-and-restore test on each of these. The short version, with prices as of October 2026:
WPvivid is worth comparing for free OneDrive/SFTP storage, migration and one staging site, with paid plans from $49 annually for two domains. Duplicator suits whole-site moves in one archive and has free restore but no free schedules, with a two-site sale price from $69.30 annually.
All-in-One WP Migration suits one-off moves, with free recovery by re-importing a file and its Unlimited Extension at $69 annually. BackWPup provides free scheduled cloud archives and restore by archive upload, with paid plans from $49 for two domains.
For hosted backups, BlogVault starts at a $49.50 annual per-site sale price, while Jetpack VaultPress Backup starts at $4.95 monthly for the first year with real-time backups. Neither is a free restore service.
Pick WPvivid if you want OneDrive or SFTP storage for free. Pick BlogVault or Jetpack if your site takes orders and you want backups that live with a separate company. If you mostly move sites rather than back them up, our All-in-One WP Migration guide shows the one-file route, our Duplicator review covers moving to an empty server, and our WordPress staging plugin roundup covers testing changes on a copy first.
Do You Still Need UpdraftPlus If Your Host Makes Backups?
Usually, yes. Host backups live with the same company as your site, and cheap plans may back up only weekly (Hostinger Premium, for example; see our Hostinger review). If the host has an outage or suspends your account, you want a copy in your own cloud storage.
For a move rather than routine backups, our migration guide covers the options. The Lunarpages article also records an UpdraftPlus restore at the same address, rather than a domain-changing migration.
Before relying on scheduled backups
Save both schedules, connect offsite storage and confirm a backup reaches it. Keep several recovery points and your own copy of wp-config.php. Test a restore on a separate site so you know what recovery requires before an incident.